Common Misconceptions about Disaster

 

Myth 1:        Disasters are truly exceptional events.

Reality:         They are a normal part of daily life and in very many cases are repetitive events.

Myth 2:        Natural disasters are an inevitable result of Mother Nature's fury.

Reality:         The triggering phenomena are natural, and virtually nothing can be done to stop earthquakes, floods or tropical storms, for example. However, the disaster is almost always the result of people and communities putting themselves at risk—and there is nothing very natural or inevitable about that. We take risks (for example, by living in seismic zones or floodable areas), either because we see distinct advantages in doing so and we don't think the risks outweigh them, or because we don't perceive any alternatives (perhaps we feel we can't afford to live in a safer place).

Myth 3:         Disasters cause a great deal of chaos and cannot possibly be managed systematically.

Reality:         There are excellent theoretical models of how disasters function and how to manage them. After more than 75 years of research in the field the general elements of disaster are extremely well known, and they tend to repeat themselves from one disaster to the next.

Myth 4:         Disasters kill people without respect for social class or economic status.

Reality:          The poor and marginalised are much more at risk of death than are rich people or the middle classes.

Myth 5:         Earthquakes are commonly responsible for very high death tolls.

Reality:          Collapsing buildings are responsible for the majority of deaths in seismic disasters. Whereas it is not possible to stop earthquakes, it is possible to construct anti-seismic buildings and to organize human activities in such a way as to minimize the risk of death. In addition, the majority of earthquakes do not cause high death tolls.

Myth 6:         Significant numbers of people survive for many days when trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Reality:          The vast majority of people brought out alive from the rubble are saved within 24, or perhaps even 12, hours of the impact.

Myth 7:         When disaster strikes panic is a common reaction.

Reality:          Most people behave rationally in disaster. While panic is not to be ruled out entirely, it is of such limited importance that some leading disaster sociologists regard it as insignificant or unlikely.

Myth 8:         People will flee in large numbers from a disaster area.

Reality:          Usually there is a "convergence reaction" and the area fills up with people. Few of the survivors will leave and even obligatory evacuations will be short-lived.

Myth 9:         After disaster has struck survivors tend to be dazed and apathetic.

Reality:          Survivors rapidly get to work on the clear-up. Activism is much more common than fatalism (this is the so-called "therapeutic community"). In the worst possible cases only 15-30 per cent of victims show passive and dazed reactions.

Myth 10:       After disaster people will not make rational decisions and will therefore inevitably tend to do the wrong thing unless authority guides them.

Reality:          People make decisions on the basis of the information that they are able to obtain and their ability to interpret it. Within this compass, most decision-making can be judged rational.

Myth 11:       Disasters usually give rise to widespread, spontaneous manifestations of antisocial behaviour.

Reality:          Generally, they are characterized by great social solidarity, generosity and self-sacrifice.

Myth 12:       Looting is a common and serious problem after disasters.

Reality:          The phenomenon of looting is rare and limited in scope. It mainly occurs when there are strong preconditions (i.e. a disaster is hardly necessary to start it off), as when a community is already deeply divided.

Myth 13:       In disaster, people resort to violence to protect their own interests.

Reality:          The 'therapeutic community' is common: people have a greater tendency to help each other than in normal times.

Myth 14:       Martial law must be imposed after disaster in order to stop society from breaking down altogether.

Reality:          The imposition of martial law after disaster is extremely rare and implies that normal mechanisms of government were never effective in any way.

Myth 15:       A strong military presence is required in areas affected by disaster in order to discourage law-breakers.

Reality:          Emergency response should have made a transition from a military activity to a fully civilian one. As increases in lawlessness are seldom a serious problem as a result of disaster, the police are usually able to deal with public order problems without the need to call for military assistance.

Myth 16:       The mass media create an accurate picture of the disasters on which they report.

Reality:          There is a pervasive tendency for the media to exaggerate and distort disaster-related information. Very rarely are journalists ever expert on disasters and crises. Their lack of expertise is often easily identifiable in the quality of their reporting. They must also provide the sort of information which viewers, listeners or readers want to have, which may add further bias to the content of their reports.

Myth 17:       Unburied dead bodies constitute a health hazard.

Reality:          Not even advanced decomposition causes a significant health hazard. Hasty burial demoralizes survivors and upsets arrangements for death certification, funeral rites, and, where needed, autopsy.

Myth 18:       Disease epidemics are an almost inevitable result of the disruption and poor health caused by major disasters.

Reality:          Generally, the level of epidemiological surveillance and health care in the disaster area is sufficient to stop any possible disease epidemic from occurring. However, the rate of diagnosis of diseases may increase as a result of improved health care.

Myth 19:       Great quantities and assortments of medicines should be sent to disaster areas.

Reality:          The only medicines that are needed are those used to treat specific pathologies, have not reached their sell-by date, can be properly conserved in the disaster area, and can be properly identified in terms of their pharmacological constituents. Any other medicines are, not only useless, but potentially dangerous.

Myth 20:       Field hospitals are particularly useful for treating people injured by sudden impact disasters.

Reality:          Field hospitals are usually set up too late to treat the injured and end up providing general medicine and continuity of care. As the transport and operation of field hospitals tends to be expensive and logistically challenging, in some cases it may be more efficient to attempt to restore or augment existing hospitals in the area, even if they are significantly damaged.

Myth 21:       In the aftermath of disaster mass vaccination is an excellent way of stopping the spread of diseases.

Reality:          Whereas the carefully targeted vaccination of specific groups (e.g. children, doctors and nurses) may be effective, indiscriminate mass vaccination is wasteful, as records cannot be kept properly, follow-up vaccination is difficult to administer and people move around too much for the initiative to work properly.

Myth 22:       Sanitary cordons should be set up around disaster areas to stop the spread of disease.

Reality:          Sanitary cordons rarely work. The movement of people and goods are too complex and chaotic to be able to control the entrance to and exit from the area in such a way as to disinfect people, which in any case may be a misguided approach. In most cases sanitary cordons do nothing for health but significantly inhibit relief efforts. The better alternative is to set up an epidemiological observatory and practise specific measures exactly where anomalous or dangerous conditions are identified.

Myth 23:       Dead bodies, survivors, streets, rubble and other things should be sprayed with disinfectant to stop the spread of disease.

Reality:          This common and popular measure wastes large quantities of disinfectant and does nothing whatsoever for public health.

Myth 24:       There is usually a shortage of resources when disaster occurs and this prevents them from being managed effectively.

Reality:          The shortage, if it occurs, is almost always very temporary. There is more of a problem in deploying resources well and using them efficiently than in acquiring them. Often there is also a problem of coping with a superabundance of certain types of resource.

Myth 25:       In a disaster aftermath the prices of essential goods always rise steeply.

Reality:          Profiteering does occur in disaster aftermaths, but it is far from being the norm. Black market surpluses of goods may drive prices down.

Myth 26:       Any kind of aid and relief is useful after disaster providing it is supplied quickly enough.

Reality:          Hasty and ill-considered relief initiatives tend to create chaos. Only certain types of technical assistance, goods and services will be required. Not all useful resources that existed in the area before the disaster will be destroyed. Donation of unusable materials or manpower consumes resources of organization and accommodation that could more profitably be used to reduce the toll of the disaster.

Myth 27:       In order to manage a disaster well it is necessary to accept all forms of aid that are offered.

Reality:          It is much better to limit acceptance of donations to goods and services that are actually needed in the disaster area.

Myth 28:       One should donate used clothes to the survivors of disasters.

Reality:          This often leads to accumulations of huge quantities of useless garments that victims cannot or will not wear.

Myth 29:       Companies, corporations, associations and governments are always very generous when invited to send aid and relief to disaster areas.

Reality:          They may be, but in the past disaster areas have been used as dumping grounds for outdated medicines, obsolete equipment, and unsaleable goods, all under the cloak of apparent generosity.

Myth 30:       Technology will save the world from disaster.

Reality:          The problem of disasters is largely a social one. We already have considerable technological resources, but they are poorly distributed and often ineffectively used. In addition, technology is a potential source of vulnerability as well as a means of reducing it.

Myth 31:       Tsunamis are tidal waves.

Reality:          Tsunamis are seismic, volcanic or landslide-induced sea waves with a completely different form and mode of propagation to bores or other waves caused by tides. Their coastal impact may be slightly influenced by tides, but not their causes.

Myth 32:       Earthquake magnitude is measured on the Richter scale.

Reality:          'Local magnitude' M_L, Charles F. Richter's scale, is inaccurate at high values and so has been replaced by body wave magnitude, moment magnitude and other more robust scales.

Myth 33:       There is such a thing as "earthquake weather".

Reality:          The popular credence that earthquakes occur when there is close, muggy weather has no basis of fact. Numerous scientific studies have sought to identify atmospheric conditions as earthquake precursors, but the only substantial success has been achieved regarding the release of halogens into the atmosphere, which causes light to be filtered and refracted.

Myth 34:       The behaviour of animals can predict earthquakes.

Reality:          Unusual behaviour by all sorts of animals, from frogs and snakes to pigs and horses, does occur before earthquakes, but despite numerous scientific studies, it is definitely not a reliable way of knowing whether an earthquake is about to happen. Perhaps we don't understand animal psychology well enough.

Myth 35:       We are well organised to face a pandemic or CBRN attack.

Reality:          In most countries, including the richer and larger ones, preparedness is at best patchy and at worst seriously lacking.

Myth 36:       In a biological terrorism attack or pandemic prophylaxis will be effective and efficient.

Reality:          Stockpiles of antidotes and vaccines are insufficient, and so are isolation wards, field response units, decontamination units, and training for responders and physicians. It may also be difficult to achieve timely identification of the pathogen or toxin involved.

Myth 37:       CBRN decontamination is a solved problem.

Reality:          Many questions remain about the protocols and procedures for decontamination, including reagents and cleansers to be used, number of people who could be decontaminated per unit time, and whether to remove all clothes before being decontaminated.

Myth 38:       The main effects of a CBRN attack or pandemic would necessarily be medical.

Reality:          Disruption of daily life could potentially have even greater consequences (in logistical, social, psychological and monetary terms) than the medical effects of the crisis.

Myth 39:       In a CBRN attack or pandemic it will be easy to avoid contamination of hospitals and other medical centres.

Reality:          For certain virulent pathogens or toxins, cross-contamination would be extremely hard to avoid without absolute order and very elaborate measures which are not likely to be forthcoming.

Myth 40:       It will be easy to identify the pathogen, chemical agent or isotope involved in a CBRN attack.

Reality:          There are so many potential pathogens, agents and isotopes that high-level laboratory analysis way be needed, which would cause problems of transportation of samples and rapidity of analyses.

Myth 41:       Anthrax is a white powder.

Reality:          Bacillus anthracis is a colourless, almost invisible substance. Weaponised spores are likely to be even less easy to see than naturally grown ones.

Myth 42:       Panic and irrational behaviour are inevitable consequences of a CBRN terrorism attack.

Reality:          In disasters of all kinds most people make an effort to behave rationally and make rational decisions. This is antithetical to panic. However, if people do not have adequate information, their decision making may defy rational analysis.

Myth 43:       Trends in terrorism are highly irregular but show a very substantial increase in recent times.

Reality:          Although the locus of terrorist activity tends to shift from one place to another, the sum total of attacks and their effects, has remained stable for several decades and shows only a modest increase, if any.

Myth 44:       Emergency responders will not report to work in a disaster, they will protect their families instead.

Reality:          It is not common for there to be mass absenteeism among key workers during the aftermath of disasters. On the contrary, people tend to have an enhanced sense of duty.

Myth 45:       Emergency responders will not know what to do during a disaster or crisis.

Reality:          It is to be hoped that training and experience have turned emergency responders and disaster managers into highly capable professionals.

Myth 46:       Disasters always happen to someone else.

Reality:          The 'syndrome of personal invulnerability' tends to mislead people into believing that they are in some way immune from disasters. It is not so.

Myth 47:       Business continuity management only applies to the private sector.

Reality:          The public sector (municipal, regional and national governments and associated agencies) must be able to weather disaster and continue its activities just as any private company should. There is thus no reason why BCM should not apply to public bodies.

Myth 48:       In disasters there are heroes and villains.

Reality:          There may indeed be villains, although the 'therapeutic community' that prevails in the aftermath tends to mitigate their effect, but most people who act selflessly and in favour of others are not strictly heroes but are just doing their jobs as best they can. When people try to be heroes the results tend to destroy the teamwork on which disaster response depends.

Myth 49:       Disaster is always a negative experience.

Reality:          While it is true that the majority of people affected by disaster suffer, in some cases terribly, there are those who profit by disaster (either legitimately or illicitly), for example by selling prefabricated dwellings. The fact that disaster happens can be used in a positive way to increase resilience against future impacts. In the best instances, reconstruction can produce a better, safer, more attractive environment than existed before the disaster. Finally, people may find the enhanced sense of community and strengthened community roles that happen in disaster aftermaths some of the best experiences of their lives.

Myth 50:       Heavy rains can cause mudslides.

Reality:          It may be partially true that mud slides, but it mostly flows. In strict terms the mass movements in question are flow-slides, not quite the 'mudslides' beloved of the mass media.

Myth 51:       Blood supplies and blood products should be sent to foreign disasters.

Reality:          There are pathological and logistical reasons why it is better to acquire blood and blood products in the country in question.

Myth 52:       When disasters occur, able-bodied adults should volunteer their services.

Reality:          The age of spontaneous volunteerism is over. Unorganised volunteers are more trouble than they are worth. The answer is to have fully constituted organisations of trained and equipped volunteers, who are integrated into the civil protection system by law or according to well-defined rules which set out their duties and responsibilities.

Myth 53:       Aid always benefits the recipients, not the donors.

Reality:          There are many cases in which the beneficiaries include the donors. Goods and services imported into a country with foreign funding tend to benefit the manufacturers and suppliers. If the aid is ill-conceived, it may only benefit the foreign suppliers.

Myth 54:       Donations in kind are safer and better than cash grants.

Reality:          Although there is a risk that cash grants may end up in the pockets of corrupt administrators or local mafias, cash is generally more flexible than donations in kind. It can be used to by goods and supplies locally and thus will stimulate local markets.

Myth 55:       Famine victims usually die of starvation.

Reality:          They most often succumb to famine-related diseases such as malnutrition, diarrhea, typhus, or cholera.

Myth 56:       Modern famines are the result of food shortages.

Reality:          They are almost invariably the result of denial of food, market imbalance or failure to distribute food.

Myth 57:       Knowledge alone leads to action.

Reality:          Producing the means to reduce disaster risk (a warning system, a hazard map, an advancement of anti-seismic building techniques, an updated building code, etc.) does not mean that it will necessarily be used. Lack of leadership, bad intentions, political paralysis, lack of funds and official indifference are some possible reasons why this is so.

Myth 58:       For every dollar [pound, euro, shekel] spent on disaster risk reduction, between four and 11 dollars are saved in damage and losses avoided.

Reality:          Cost-benefit ratios are largely a form of "urban myth". The statement relies on hypothetical assumptions that are almost entirely untested. It is quite probable that prudent investment in risk reduction is less expensive than are losses, but no one has the slightest idea how much cheaper.

Myth 59:       Cost-benefit data will convince decision makers to invest in disaster risk reduction.

Reality:          In reality, political incentives are far more powerful than economic ones.

Myth 60:       Disaster prevention is a good investment.

Reality:          It might be, but there is no guarantee that it will be. Most other viable forms of investment yield benefits that are more tangible, realised more quickly and more visible to those who invest or support investment decisions, including voters.

Myth 61:       In disasters, crises and emergencies, people with disabilities tend to be passive and unable to react.

Reality:          People with severe cognitive disabilities may be passive and unable to react, but there is a vast range of disabilities, and between one in seven and one in five members of the general population is affected by them. Many people with disabilities live relatively autonomous lives and in so doing are very resourceful. With the right kind of help they can react very effectively to disasters.

Myth 62:       Pandemic influenza is almost exclusively a medical problem.

Reality:          Although influenza is obviously a medical problem, many of the most serious issues associated with a pandemic would be socio-economic.  

 

Myth 63:       Tsunamis never catch fire.  

 

Reality:          Ruptured fuel tanks can spill petroleum onto the water and it can blaze away. This is a common effect of the landfall of major tsunamis on industrialised coasts.  

 

Myth 64:      Volcanoes produce smoke.  

 

Reality:         Smoke largely comes from burning organic materials. Volcanoes emit magma (lava), phreatic steam (from groundwater), particulates (e.g. silica) and gases (HF, HS, CO, CO2, etc.). Smoke may come from burning buildings or forests struck by lava flows, but volcanoes do not produce smoke directly.  

 

Myth 65:       Children and young people are too vulnerable to be exposed to the effects of disaster.   

 

Reality:         While we would not want to cause psychological harm to children, they tend to be adaptable and usually want to participate in what is going on during the aftermath of a disaster. 

 

Myth 66:      Stress from the disaster makes breastmilk 'dry up' in disasters.  

 

Reality:        Although, due to stress, there may be a temporary dip in milk supply while breastfeeding, continued breastfeeding is possible with proper support. Women who experience difficulties in breastfeeding during evacuation or sheltering indicate that they need space and support. (i.e. a space designated for breastfeeding). [With thanks to Sarah DeYoung] 

 

Myth 67:      Infant formula is helpful and life-saving after disasters.  

 

Reality:         Mass untargeted donations of infant formula are associated with increases in diarrhoeal illness, malnutrition, and infant death. [With thanks to Sarah DeYoung]   

 

Myth 68:       Women are not good disaster managers. Men are better.

 

Reality:         It is probably the other way around. Women are often better than men at multitasking and they can sometimes have a deeper appreciation of the essence of problems that need solving.  

 

Myth 69:       When given a warning, people flee from an area. 

 

Reality:         They may evacuate, but 'flee' is too emotive and inaccurate term for the rational decision to put themselves out of harm's way.  

 

Myth 70:       A good emergency plan always ensures a good response to crises. 

 

Reality:         It might, but much depends on the activation of the plan, including dissemination, awareness, training, the availability of resources, and familiarity with emergency procedures.  

 

Myth 71:       The absence of a plan is no barrier to managing a disaster well. 

 

Reality:         Large amounts of improvisation are usually grossly inefficient and can be lethal.  

 

Myth 72:       More electronic hardware and software are needed in order to manage a crisis or disaster well. 

 

Reality:         Dependency on electronic algorithms and means of communication, mapping, recording, and so on, can be dangerous. Many aids to management are counter-intuitive and, for very good reasons, field commanders are reluctant to depend on them.

See: Alexander, D.E. 2007. Misconception as a barrier to teaching about disasters. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 22(2): 95-103. DOI: 10.1017/S1049023X00004441

 

Cracking the Nut: Formulating PhD Research Questions

PhD candidate D. Alexander struggles with his fieldwork, circa 1975.

In many instances, the hardest part of writing a PhD thesis is formulating the research questions and any hypotheses that may arise from them.

A research question must be something that does not have an obvious answer. It must not be banal, but equally it must not be obscure. From the outset, there must be a good likelihood of arriving at an answer during three years of concentrated research. It must be something that has not been answered before, or at least not in the manner that the thesis will employ. It must have wider implications than merely finding something out within the strict confines of a field or laboratory data collection exercise.

The first part of doctoral research is a matter of finding out. On the basis of key words (geographical, methodological, philosophical, topical, practical, sectoral, etc., etc.) what problems suggest themselves as amenable to solution and worth tackling? Rarely can research questions be formulated without familiarity with the relevant body of literature, which sets the problems to be solved in the future. So the literature needs to be read critically, with an eye to the issues that it does not succeed in resolving, or the new vistas that it opens. Hence, in doctoral research, the art of reviewing the literature is emphatically not about reporting what has been done. It is a matter of probing the body of research to find out what has not been accomplished, and asking why.

Obviously, many questions are not answered because they are intractable. Most of us could not manage to write a thesis that asks “What is the meaning of life?” Other questions lack substance. Thus, “How many ambulances are there in London?” is not a valid research question, as all it stimulates one to do is to count and find out a simple answer. Doctoral research is about uncovering causal relations and pursuing the implications of the answer to the research question.

In learning how to do research, the biggest hurdle may well be knowing how to ask the question that motivates the study. “How does it work?” may be less important than “Why does it work?” - or “Why does it not work?” or “Why does it not work any better than it actually does?”

Without a good research question (or more likely a set of questions), there is a strong chance that the project will condemn itself to irrelevancy, or even grind to a halt. But why is it so difficult to formulate a viable research question? Why are PhD students so afraid of the other questions: Has it been done before? Can it be done at all? Is it worth doing? What if it all fails?

Here, then, is a strategy for launching the research project.

(a) Start with the key words and use them to define the area of study - theoretically, methodologically, geographically, in terms of scale, discipline, sector, profession, whatever. List as many key words as you like.

(b) Define the body of literature that is pertinent to the field in question. Develop a critique of it, but one that is strictly focussed on the need to define a new research project. It may be necessary to take this step more than once if more than one body of literature is involved.

For example, if the project were about the management of waste generated by the destruction caused by a disaster, there is a discrete literature on the topic and it is not difficult to assemble. We then double-check that we have identified all the most relevant and significant sources and are not missing anything vital. Research in this field has been conducted for 20-23 years. Where has it got us? What is missing from the results? What do the field examples suggest to us (especially the Kobe, Tōhoku and Christchurch earthquakes) about what needs to be done next? What techniques are involved in managing waste, and in developing models? What can be modelled and to what benefit? What are the shortcomings of the analyses? What are the trends in the development of this small field and where do they leave us at present?

(c) List any questions that have not been adequately answered in the research literature. Evaluate them in terms of their potential for study under particular, specified conditions that pertain to the PhD project.

(d) Answers to research questions in disaster risk reduction are not going to be universal. However, they need to have at least some universal relevance. Hence, the questions will be answered in specific contexts, for example, in a particular place or region. The research will need to characterise the answer in terms of the extent to which culture, politics, religion, customs, legal and administrative organisation, and so on, will limit the ability of the findings to be applied elsewhere. Study of a single landslide which devastates a single village may be justified, but only if it offers lessons for similar situations in many other places. If this is not the case, the research will not be worthy of a PhD.

(e) We end up with a question of the sort “What do we need to know next in order to take this field forward?” The exact formulation will respond to what we already know, what we can find out with the available resources, including that of time, and how much the solution contributes to the catalogue of answers to significant problems around the world.

(f) Having defined a workable question, it can be turned into a hypothesis. This is a proposition to be tested, formulated as a tentative statement. Statements like “Country X is not well prepared to manage a tsunami” are not acceptable hypotheses. The statement may be true or false, but there is no depth to the process of verifying it. Already, a statement like “Political polarisation is the main factor that prevents adequate tsunami preparedness” is a little more incisive, as it forces one to look at causal relationships. Hence, a hypothesis must be plausible but probing.

Let me illustrate the process with a word about my own PhD thesis, which I completed in 1977. I should start by pointing out that I did not feel confident to formulate a research project until I was half way through my post-doctoral fellowship. Goodness knows how I got through the PhD, but somehow I did.

I was working in the field of process-based stream-channel geomorphology and either a semi-arid or a Mediterranean environment. Having chosen the latter, I was stuck with the fact that strong seasonal differences complicated the response of landscape to climate. Given that fact, and in addition the impact of tectonics and sea-level change, stream channels in my field area (central southern Italy) lacked integration and equilibrium. They tended to be controlled by base-level fall during episodes of high erosion. Discontinuities migrated up the tributaries. After much reading - about 18 months of it - I decided that the questions I needed to answer were (a) was this a diffusion process and therefore subject to the diffusion equations?, and (b) as turbulence is a diffusion process, does it contribute to homeostasis by diffusing morphological change in loose-boundary channels? A year later, the answers were that discontinuities did seem to migrate by a diffusion process, or at least the model could be made to fit, but turbulent diffusion created oscillations that, although they furthered this process at a strictly local level, rapidly damped out downstream.

The data largely came from a few sections of channel, surveyed in the field, accompanied by a complex process of numerical simulation. Did the answers have any relevance outside the area surveyed, indeed, even in the next drainage basin 15 km away? Yes, as the analysis touched on some rather fundamental issues. One of those was ”Does randomness exist?” Not that I could provide a definitive answer, but it was interesting to speculate (yes it does, but largely as a convenient generalisation of complex deterministic processes). Another question was, “Is there a distinctive landscape shaped by the Mediterranean climate’s annual oscillations?” The answer, once again highly provisional, was no there isn’t, except in terms of the speed and rhythm with which morphological change occurs. In the end, the analysis carried out for the thesis tackled some theoretical issues (how discontinuities propagate through stream longitudinal profiles) and had a dig at some deeper philosophical questions. That was enough. No doubt it has all been roundly surpassed by subsequent research, but it was a good training in the scientific method.

In conclusion, the first research question should be “What is wrong with the research?” Dissatisfaction with existing answers is a very good motivation for finding new ones.

Disaster Studies Outside In

The mausoleum of Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, in Hamadan, Iran

Professor J-C. Gaillard has published one of the most original and profound meditations on disaster risk reduction to appear in recent years (Gaillard 2018). I thank J-C for his provocative and stimulating contribution. It is an honour to disagree with him.

His paper is a critique of disaster studies over the last 40 years. It raises some interesting and controversial questions. For example, is to be a scientist also to be a colonialist? Why should the search for a set of universal truths be regarded as hegemony? J-C’s thesis is that Western (i.e. European and North American) models of science have suppressed other productive ways of thinking. This is one reason why the hazards paradigm has continued to eclipse the vulnerability paradigm. Western technology powers this dysphasia. I am intrigued but not convinced.

As undergraduates, we were all induced to read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1970). On a shelf in the LSE library there was a row of 29 dog-eared, well-thumbed copies of this book. The next step was to believe Kuhn’s thesis. But ever since I graduated, I have felt that the idea of a Kuhnian scientific revolution was a self-fulfilling prophesy rather than a concrete reality, convenient rather than true. Admittedly, scientists (including social scientists) are apt to imitate their peers when deciding what to study and how to do it, but science is more pluralistic than the paradigm hypothesis implies.

Western science is not 40 years old (pace, J-C) but stems from the work of thinkers two millennia ago, strongly tempered by their counterparts in the Arab world. To mark that fact I made a personal pilgrimage to the tomb of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) in Hamadan, western Iran. He bore some responsibility for the hazards paradigm! Disaster science, born in Canada (Prince 1920) and Russia (Sorokin 1942), is only 100 years old, but it has taken the same path: a search for universal truths about the human condition.

Technology may indeed have been the means of repressing African and Asian peoples, and denying the value of indigenous knowledge, but that is far from the whole story. Asiatic societies have been at least as keen on technological solutions as western ones - indeed, often more so. On the other hand, Asian and African academics have fully embraced the Western model of scholarship, the experimental method of replicability (Harvey 1965).

No one would deny that there is much to learn from local conditions. Western disaster scientists have been investigating them in many contexts, western and eastern, for a century. In this endeavour, there has been no shortage of pluralism. However, much depends on what the researcher makes of local knowledge. Local studies are all very well, but unless they have something to say of a more general nature they have limited utility.

In disaster studies at present, the most prolific country is China. There are some particularly Chinese preoccupations (the effect of drought upon crops, seismic landslides) but most Chinese disaster science is perfectly similar to its Western counterpart.

One of the most negative aspects of the hazards paradigm has been the way that it has discouraged cultural studies of disaster risk. But rather than being forcibly exported, ‘Western culture’ is an oversimplified concept, a ragbag of many different things (and a good many of them were the product of cross-fertilisation with non-Western influences). Western countries have many different cultures. In response to that, colonialism was practised at home before it was ever exported. Readers of this my detect an inconsistency between the idea of the Western cradle of universal science and the plurality of Western cultures. In fact, science is not ‘Western’, it is the property of all humanity, but what counts is how we use it. And we use it in different ways.

Some time ago, I wrote about Baroque culture as a model for the present day, because it thrived on the tension of opposites (Alexander 2000). It is a pity no one has taken up the challenge of investigating the lessons of history given by the baroque period (Maravall 1979). Although history does not repeat itself, it has a tendency to foist the past upon us in entirely unexpected ways. The tension of opposites fuels creativity at the same time as it creates unreconcilable contrasts. That is what we face in scholarship as well as in life.

The real enemy of inclusiveness is not academic colonialism, but competitivity. This is now truly a global phenomenon. Asian universities are no less competitive than are Western ones. We know that there is a paradox: science is better advanced by collaboration than competition, but global models force us into the competitive model.

There is no greater oversimplification than the idea that people who live in North America and Europe are responsible for global phenomena. For this to be true, the mechanism needs to be demonstrated and it reveals itself to be a gross oversimplification. Global trends are global because they are globally supported. Emasculating Western academics would not lead to sudden flowering of disaster scholarship in the rest of the world. And in any case, is this not the Chinese century?

Professor J-C Gaillard responds:-

It is likewise an honour to respond to your rejoinder to my Inside Out commentary for the 40-year anniversary of Disasters. This piece is indeed provocative and I’d be very happy should it contribute to open up a debate on the epistemology and practice of disaster research. Your rejoinder is a first step in this direction and I am therefore very grateful. In fact, I agree with some of your points although I obviously stand by my overall argument.

I, in fact, agree that referring to the West as an homogenous entity can be problematic in some instances. It doesn’t reflect the complex reality of the world, indeed, and I obviously struggle with this in several instances in the paper (e.g. the use of OECD as a proxy and the positioning of China and Japan) but I also feel like this short paper wasn’t the appropriate venue to further this complex debate.

I rather focus on the core of the argument, which is why, to me, disaster research has not changed as much as it claims it has over the past 40 years. For example, one of my concerns is that most of the concepts that have been structuring disaster studies over the past decades indeed come from Indo-European languages and that these concepts have been rolled out in many other contexts where they do not necessarily make sense, which may have skewed our understanding of disasters (if such events/processes actually exist as we usually understand them) and hence how disaster risk reduction is considered.

I also agree that there is no single centre of power at one global level but multiple cores at many different scales. I only mention this in passing in the paper but the processes of marginalisation and unequal power relations between researchers that I discuss at the world scale happen at regional and national levels too, for example between researchers from the capital vs researcher from peripheral/smaller cities, including within wealthy countries of what I call the West. Regardless of the scale of core-periphery relationships in disaster studies these unequal power relations seem to involve consent (in Gramsci’s terms) on the side of those who have less power to make decision. As such, it is definitely a complex relationship that is surely not a one-way process.

In essence, it is the processes and relationships more than the actual location of centres of power and peripheries that matter in my argument. This is why I’m not suggesting to ‘emasculate’ researchers from the wealthiest countries/regions/cities/universities (again, in relative terms at different scales). For disaster studies to live up to its ambition I’m rather calling for more dialogue and fair collaboration where local researchers lead and outsiders support, meaning that the latter definitely have their own role to play still.

Best wishes,

JC

Prof. Ben Wisner contributes the following comments:-

I am also very grateful to JC and to David for launching this important discussion.

Whatever the epistemological arguments might be, in practical political terms the result of using the term 'natural disaster' has two pernicious effects. Firstly, it naturalizes disasters in the popular imagination, drawing attention away from the social, economic and political forces that shape the way we live. Secondly, it acts as a smoke screen that obscures the responsibility governments bear for controlling the CREATION of risk by incautious investments, both public and private, control of corrupt buildiing practices, etc.

It is quite likely true that for those who study disasters and natural hazards the short hand phrase, 'natural disaster' does not affect the way they understand disasters. But they are professionals. Most people do not have the advantage or luxury of years of study of these things. So my objections are far less philosophical and more pragmatic.

That said, I return to my original gratitude for the debate. One thing that struck me in JC's response just now as the phrase, "... concepts that have been structuring disaster studies over the past decades indeed come from Indo-European languages and that these concepts have been rolled out in many other contexts where they do not necessarily make sense." He agrees with David on this, and so do I. What piques my interest is the first part of the statement. Would it be a luxury to spend time searching among the world's roughly 6,000 non-Indo-European languages for terms that bear in interesting ways on the English words hazard, threat, emergency, crisis, disaster? In fact, of the 445 living Indo-European languages, most of us never consider terms and concepts in most of them in our disaster and hazard studies. For example, the Spanish term coming out of Bolivia, 'bien vivir' I find valuable as a way of pointing to desirable security and livelihood policies, both of importance for reduction of disaster risk.
 

References

Alexander, D.E. 2000. Confronting Catastrophe: New Perspectives on Natural Disasters. Terra Publishing, Harpenden, U.K., and Oxford University Press, New York, 282 pp.

Gaillard, J.C. 2018. Disaster studies inside out. Disasters doi: 10.1111/disa.12323.

Harvey, D. 1969. Scientific explanation: the model of natural science. Ch. 4. Explanation in Geography. Edward Arnold, London: 30-43.

Kuhn, T.S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (first edition 1962). University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 222 pp.

Maravall, J.A. 1979. La cultura de la crisis barocca. Historia 16: 80-90.

Prince, S. 1920. Catastrophe and Social Change: Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster. Studies in History, Economics and Public Law no. 94. Colombia University Press, New York, 151 pp.

Sorokin, P.A. 1942. Man and Society in Calamity: the Effects of War, Revolution, Famine, Pestilence Upon Human Mind, Behavior, Social Organization and Cultural Life. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 353 pp.

"You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Brexit may indeed teach the British people what it feels like to be in a real, all-enveloping crisis, but it is not the greatest threat that we face in the UK. There are at least five other contingencies that could have a greater impact, and they are all linked to each other.

The first is a large volcanic eruption. In 2010, when the UK Risk Register was first published, there was no mention of such a thing, which is logical as Britain has no active volcanoes. Within weeks, ash emissions from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull shut down civil aviation over 70% of the continent for almost a week. This was barely a foretaste of what could occur. In the 1820s, Eyjafjallajökull erupted for 13 months, including 25 days on full blast--and it is one of the smaller Icelandic volcanoes.

In April 2010, eight and a half million travellers were stranded by the cessation of flights. A bigger, more sustained eruption could lead to stop-start air transportation and prolonged airport closures for months on end. Besides the bankruptcy of low-cost airlines, there would be profound implications for ground and sea travel, hospitality, business, tourism and cultural activities, even for medicine, as the April 2010 crisis delayed the air-freighting of bone marrow for transplant.

Secondly, there is pandemic influenza. This tends to strike on a 30-40 year cycle. It is now a century since the so-called ‘Spanish ‘flu’ pandemic that emerged at the end of the First World War, infected 500 million people and killed 3-5 per cent of the world’s population. Subsequent pandemics have been disruptive, sometimes highly so, but not nearly as bad. This should not lull us into thinking that modern medicine has solved the problem: human beings have little or no natural immunity to pandemic ‘flu. A highly lethal strain could come in waves over a two-year period, and we would be 7-9 months into the crisis before vaccines became available to the public.

Thirdly, space weather is a phenomenon that could do considerable damage to the lifelines and networks on which we depend for normal life. A coronal mass ejection (CME, associated with sunspots) on the scale of that which occurred in 1859 could be deeply disruptive. This is known as the ‘Carrington event’ after the amateur astronomer Richard Carrington who observed and sketched the sunspots. Hours later, the CME played havoc with the telegraph, which was the only advanced means of communication at the time. Such were the geoelectrical currents that the CME generated that messages could be sent without switching the telegraph apparatus on, but the operators were liable to electric shocks from handling the equipment.

In 2012 a ‘Carrington event’ on the Sun sent waves of plasma into space and they narrowly missed the Earth. Knowledge of what such a phenomenon could do in the modern world is sketchy and a little speculative. Very large electricity transformers may burn out, telecommunications would be disrupted, satellites would be damaged and there would be interruptions and inaccuracies in global positioning systems, which are used in everything from driverless cars to air transportation, and even to manage rubbish collection. One would not want to be landing at Heathrow if there were a vertical error in GPS of more than 50 metres.

Space weather is monitored around the clock by the Met Office, which issues a daily forecast. Currently, it is one of the great underestimated hazards that could reveal our dependency on critical infrastructure. This is the set of networks that are essential to daily life. It includes energy, water sewerage, food distribution, healthcare, banking, government and emergency services. Besides space weather, if any other agent were to cause a widespread, prolonged loss of electricity supply, there would be  consequences for all the other forms of critical infrastructure, as to a greater or lesser extent they all driven by electricity.

Over the last decade, wide-area, prolonged power outages have occurred in various parts of the world at the rate of about one a year. The northeast USA was plunged into darkness in 2003 as a result of a grid failure, and again in October 2012 as a result of superstorm Sandy.

British infrastructure, commerce and industry endure millions of cyber attacks every month. In Ukraine, attackers brought down the electricity grid in December 2015 and severely disrupted banks, airports and railways in mid-2017. The UK power grid is well protected, but if it were to suffer a total shut-down it would take days to be restored. Meanwhile, there is considerable concern that many of the generators that would have to substitute for grid electricity are liable to breakdowns and malfunctions.

Finally, there is a very small possibility that a tsunami would be caused in the River Thames estuary by the spontaneous explosion of a large concentration of Second World War munitions that lies in a sunken ship off the Isle of Sheppey. Given the proximity to the Isle of Grain LNG and petroleum storage facilities, the tsunami might carry burning fuel.

Despite this gloomy story of doom and destruction, there are grounds for optimism. Research is underway into cascading disasters and how to prevent or mitigate them. These are events in which impacts occur in sequences or proliferations. For example, the sudden loss of electrical current would affect many activities and cause many secondary problems. They can be foreseen and prepared for. Where vulnerabilities overlap or interact, escalation points will occur, making the impacts potentially worse than the initial event that set them off. These too can be identified and mitigated in advance of the crisis.

Resilience needs a combination of foresight, adaptability and redundancy. Foresight involves building scenarios and investigating vulnerability. Adaptability requires new ways of getting around shortages, blockages and shocks. Redundancy may be about duplicating procedures and equipment but it is just as much about agile thinking that finds new routes out of a crisis.

Preparedness and crisis response need to be democratised, and that is the great challenge of modern times. We all need to take some responsibility for the risks we run. The only way to bring these under control is to treat the process as participatory exercise, with community groups flanking government and private sector planners. We need to shake off complacency and inform people so that they can make their own choices.

One final thing that we have learned about crisis is that it is heavily influenced by context. In Britain, the hollowing out of the welfare state bodes ill for the next major impact. A society that is weakened and has lost its cohesion is ill-equipped to confront crisis, which will tend, as it always does, to pick off the most vulnerable.

What if...?

In its current formulation, emergency planning is geared to events of a known and manageable size. Although, by orchestrating standard operating procedures, it can cope with unexpected events, it is mostly about preparing to manage the impact of known and expected hazards. In this process, it can take advantage of scientific information on the magnitude, frequency, evolution and impacts of the hazards. This is usually accomplished by building scenarios of possible future events. Plans usually require multiple scenarios, as impacts can vary, not only with the size of the hazard, but also with time of day (reflecting aggregate patterns of human activity), season and a variety of factors that change over time in the short term.

The question of what magnitude of event to plan remains open. Most planning scenarios refer to events with recurrence intervals of once a decade, or certainly no less than once every 25 years. As the magnitude-frequency rule states that natural hazards tend to be large in proportion to declining frequency (and lengthening recurrence interval), this excludes the larger, less frequent events. It is held that there is no practical value in preparing for the once-in-10,000-year event, or even the once in a millennium event. As a result of conventions in floodplain mapping, plans that prepare to manage the one-hundred-year flood are quite common, but many other hazards that might occur once in a century are not prepared for at the relevant magnitude. At first encounter, this convention, to restrict the size of the event to be planned for, seems like common sense because it does not commit resources to events that have a very low likelihood of occurring during the lifetime of the plan. Planners, however, remain troubled by the niggling sensation that we would be seriously uncovered if the very large event were to occur. Statistically, faith in the ‘normal distribution’ model of hazard magnitude and frequency has begun to wane. Perhaps this is the result of intensifying climatic hazards, or perhaps it is because very big events have, from time to time, happened, such as the magnitude 9 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011.

What if a VEI-7 or -8 volcanic eruption occurred? This would be an event that ejected between 100 and 1,000 km3 of volcanic material into the atmosphere and onto Earth’s surface. It could involve colossal blast effects and would affect a vast area, and probably the climate of the entire planet. Could one plan to respond to such an event? Indeed, what are the limits of impact beyond which emergency planning is impossible because it would be utterly ineffective?

We need to start with some basic principles. I will not discuss the principles of volcanology or natural hazards, important though they are. Here, I am referring to principles of emergency planning. One of these is that the planning should be carried out for the mass of the population and therefore should be as democratic and participatory as possible. This requires that top-down harmonisation be applied to bottom-up, “grass roots”, emergency response capability. Another is that planning should aim to reduce improvisation to a minimum, not by rigidly imposing constraints on emergency management and response, but by anticipating needs and planning to satisfy them. A further principle is that scenarios should be the basis of planning wherever and whenever they can be constructed reliably. A final principle is that the response to civilian emergencies should not be militarised - or remilitarised, as in most countries the armed forces were once the only source of disaster response. Broadly speaking, the civilianisation of emergency management (from paramilitary civil defence to collaborative, civilian civil protection) is a long-standing trend that should not be reversed. In other words, the solution to a major disaster does not lie in declaring martial law.

Almost by definition, a VEI-7 eruption would overwhelm emergency response capabilities. The same could be true of other kinds of disaster. Apart from nuclear war, these include an influenza pandemic of the scope and ferocity of that which affected at least a quarter of the world’s population (of whom, 11 per cent died) in 1918-1919. The scenario starts to take on the characteristics of a Hollywood disaster movie, one, moreover, that is redolent of science fiction and an intolerable future for human beings on planet Earth.

The question is then what could be done to prepare for and respond to an event of this calibre? Most emergency planners would shrug their shoulders and fatalistically argue that it is too far off the scale (of both time and impact) to be prepared for. This is not quite true, but the process would require a reorientation with respect to current policies, priorities, philosophies and procedures.

One may be tempted to use the Cold War as inspiration, as it was a time when preparations were - ostensibly - made to survive outright nuclear war. Two aspects of this are striking. The first is that most of the preparations were futile. Assumptions about support structures and the habitability of the environment had not been thought through. The second is that there was always the feeling that Cold War preparations would have privileged the rich and powerful and left the mass of the population in the lurch. Indeed, the emergence of civil protection as an alternative to the Cold War’s civil defence model was impeded by the fear among law-makers that if special powers were granted to emergency response forces, they could be used to take over a country and subvert it from democracy to dictatorship. Such fears were not entirely unfounded: in the 1980s when all of this was under scrutiny there were plots to mount coups d’etat in both Britain and Italy.

In the event of overwhelming, massive, ubiquitous disruption, what does emergency planning have to contribute? First of all, unless a major event were imminent, it would need to be carried out in purely theoretical terms, not through the practical commitment of resources. One principle would need to be maintained, namely that emergency planning is about organising in order to make the best possible use of existing resources, and thus reducing improvisation to an unavoidable minimum. Another principle would have to be revised. Emergency planning is normally about planning to manage an emergency by bringing the situation fully under control. In a VEI-7 eruption, that would not be possible. It would be a case of doing the best that one can against overwhelmingly unpropitious circumstances. Limited aims would therefore need to prevail. Hence, the planners would need to decide what aims would be feasible (in the light of the scenario) and how to achieve them.

The larger the emergency, the more important is its ethical framework. For example, in a pandemic with slow and limited development of vaccines, medical ethics should determine who has priority for vaccination. Ethics are the top of the pyramid of response, and they should be dealt with on a priority basis as a means of orientating the framework of all other actions. Thereafter, basic human needs would indicate the priorities. The extent to which these could be satisfied would depend, not only on technical considerations of feasibility, but also on the acceptability of radical modifications to people’s social and economic realities, and above all their livelihoods. Jobs and businesses would be created and destroyed very quickly indeed, and that process would need to be managed with care.

In this process, and in the planning, relatively little can be learned from looking back at the World Wars. However, one important lesson concerns the role of expectations. Life is more complicated now than it was 75 years ago, not only because there are more people on the planet and there is more technology, which has become a more fundamental part of daily life, but also because expectations have changed radically. As most of those expectations would be unable to be fulfilled during a massive disaster, thought needs to be devoted to the question of how to change them.

A further principle of disasters is that decision makers are seldom swayed by scientific evidence. Not only do the politicians routinely ignore it, but in some of the world’s most influential countries a new breed of leader has emerged who actively opposes the evidence. What would the reaction to an emergency plan for a VEI-7 eruption be on the part of a climate change denier? The naive belief that science convinces people because it is objective is nowadays easily discredited.

Nevertheless, if a VEI-7-type emergency were to occur, plans would suddenly become essential documents. A further challenge arises. Given the reluctance of governments even to think about such an event, let alone prepare for it, how would a plan fare that has never been tested and is not familiar to its users? The answer is that we would need to write plans that can be, as far as possible, absorbed and acted upon spontaneously. This is not an ideal approach, but it embraces realism.

In summary, planning for overwhelming disasters is not impossible, but it needs a radically different mindset. Some principles are held in common with ‘normal’ emergency planning, others must take account of totally new circumstances. As always, careful study of consequences is recommended: see my essay on the egg hypothesis.